This is a picture of the bird on the branch that I did in gouache for illustration. I had a difficult time at first working with the gouache. My first problem was that I painted the whole board. So then when I tried to remove the paint where the bird and branch were I had a hard time getting it to come clean. Then I decided to put on way to much paint. I probably had about 7 layers of paint, so when I tried to remove some it took a while. I was trying to make the bird look feathery and not show so much of the illustration board. When Rusty helped me he removed most of the paint and pushed the remaining paint around to make the bird look like it was soft. That technique worked better so I used it on the head of the bird for the feathers. For the branch I mixed up some browns and laid them down and then removed parts of them to look like the branch had texture. The other problem that I had was water droplets. I would have water drop onto my painting and then it would leave a little mark. I didnt worry to much about fixing them though. If I had some more time I would try to do something more with the background then is done now.